If you decide you don’t want to vote, that’s your decision, I think to obey in advance, but whatever the case, it’s your business if you decide to reject whatever civic engagement for yourself. But if you’re out there messaging to other people that they shouldn’t bother voting, or parroting that kind of messaging out on social media, or in forums, or in group chats, or one on one to your friends or family, then you’re doing voter suppression. Do you really want to be the bad guy telling someone they shouldn’t attempt to exercise their rights?
There’s a pivotal PA Supreme Court retention election here in Pennsylvania and so I’m also receiving ridiculous amounts of pamphlets in the mail trying to trick me in various ways into thinking I should vote against retaining the PA Supreme Court judges or maybe not vote at all. I’m starting to see a LOT of “don’t bother voting” propaganda on social media from left-coded accounts, as the election approaches. It’s one thing to propagandize about why other people should vote one way or another, but trying weirdly to shame people to try to make them feel foolish to try, or stupid to hope, in order to deceive them into not exercising the rights they have — that’s bad guy shit. Nobody decent should be talking down to anyone else like that.